What does your retro PC gaming solution look like?If you're just running a VM or whatever that counts, I just wanna know how you're pulling it off for your purposes.
>>12870469mister fpga. does all of em.
>>12870486Are you like running Windows 98 on it?
>>12870469(Currently broken due to PSU) sff Optiplex gx115, for RTS and city builders. Got a crt and other stuff from e-waste.
>>12870550you have cores for each pc platform (spectrum, mac, msdos etc) and then when you launch the core the fpga behaves like that specific computer and you launch the game from there. you can do windows 98 on it
Dual core e7300LCD 4:3 HP hi end monitorSony minitower from early 2000's for soundWindows XP and 7All tucked away in my retro corner of comfiness
>>12870585The XP PC I have is a C2D E8600, 4GB of RAM, GTX 285, and 120GB SSD running with a 15" CRT. It's shared with a P3 Win 9x PC on a KVM.
>>12870469>What does your retro PC gaming solution look likeMy regular PC because I'm not stupid enough to buy 30 year old hardware to play games I can run in a VM.
Old eMachines system.>Trigem Florida TG(generally gets ID'd as a COMO3, but it's a socket 370, not a slot 1)>Celeron 366MHz>256MBs of 133MHz RAM forced down to 66MHz>on-board ATI 3D Rage Turbo AGP 4MB>on-board Crystal CS4280 audio>ISA16 SoundBlaster 16 Value(not the Vibra, using actual OPL)>Gotek Floppy Drive emulator flashed to use FlashFloppy instead of the stock Gotek firmware>CF to IDE adapter>Dell 772c 17-inch CRT monitorIt's just at the sweet spot to be flexible for a wide range of 90's PC gaming. I can disable the internal and external cache in BIOS, which drops the CPU down to about the power of a 486DX 66MHz to Pentium 100MHz, and have a damn solid DOS gaming machine with 16-bit SoundBlaster audio. Or I can leave them enabled and have a solid Win9x gaming machine for everything about up to DirextX 6. I might upgrade down the line with a PCI video card that supports DirectX 9 so I can get games like Unreal to work at resolutions above postage stamp, but I'm pretty happy with this setup as it is. Got 4 4GB CF cards, one for DOS 6.22, one for Win3.11, one for Win98SE, and one for messing around with different OS's and configurations. Been thinking about turning it into a JP Win98SE install for playing old JP Windows games.Only downsides are the board only has 2 PCI and 2 ISA16 slots, the bottom PCI and top ISA slot overlap the same bracket slot so you can only have 3 cards installed at once, and the BIOS is sadly limited. Can't even disable the eMachines splash screen on boot so you can see what the POST is doing. There's also a lot of options tweek programs claim to be able to adjust in the BIOS that you don't have the option listed for, so if they actually work or will brick your motherboard is debatable. I'm not willing to take the risk myself.
>>12870606>being a bitter asshole when the OP said it's fine if that's how you're playing your older PC games
>>12870469Linux + Wine works surprisingly well
>>12870591>GTX 285I have a low profile Radeon HD 8490 which is newer but way worse. I got it because it was a never sold leftover and it's good enough for me.Like some people mentioned there is no reason for machines like this pretty much EXCEPT it's the whole experience m8, no flashy fucking RGB bullshit. I guess a similar situation with consoles and CRTs.
>>12870627I originally tried to run it as an XP x64 PC with 8GB of RAM to be as blitzingly crazy as possible but the x64 environment was just too primitive back then to be stable enough for anything but very practical applications (i.e. not gaming) so I cut my losses, pulled 4GB of the memory, and scaled the OS back to MCE 2005.
>>12870606This. I still have tons of old Windows '95 and Dos game discs laying around bit I'd rather just drop $5 for a game off GOG if I really feel like playing it again. Using a modern PC is far more practical than wasting space trying to keep old ass computer hardware up and running
>>12870469DOSBox Staging for DOS, 86Box with a 200MHz Pentium Pro for Win98.All running on my macbook pro. Sure it would be nice to have real hardware, but then I wouldn't be able to play in bed.And I was there so I don't miss ball mice and CRT flicker headache at all, I just want to play the games. DOSBox Staging does have pretty nice tasteful shaders with EGA and VGA emulation. 86Box looks like ass admittedly, I need to figure out the setup better.
>>12870469Just VM, DOSBox and native Win10 where possible on my modern PC. I'd love to find a good CRT monitor though, need to start visiting recycling centres
>>12870486sister FPGA is not retro
>>12870657>Win10It's a good windows. You don't get that backwards compatibility on Mac, no sire.
i am brown
>>128707306mb cache Nice
I've never been one to be beholden to the limitations of the time for PC gaming. Pushing both software and hardware to breaking point was always something I enjoyed about PC gaming once I knew wtf I was doing so to this day I do not personally have a desire to stick to period correct hardware. More resolution, more frames and especially relevant today better input devices (controllers especially) give me the experience I desire and my modern pc can provide that. One of my biggest memories was playing midtown madness 2 on a pc that got maybe 20fps on a good day and it was excruciating so never again.So I welcome modern ports and patches, I welcome tools like dgvoodoo2 and nglide and I welcome VM's that let you configure for hardware that didn't exist (or was LOADSEMONE) at the time. Obviously not all games can be pushed in such a manner but where they can I will.Hell even just integer scaling can do a world of good.
>>12870469DOSBox-XAnd for windows games I enjoy finding a way to run them natively on win10. dgVoodoo has worked wonders.
>>12870730No being brown in pc gaming is a state of mind, you are a toaster user. Toasty knows the grass can be greener and dreams of that but it does not interfere with enjoying the games they can play whether by hook or by crook or just because said game is old.The brown poorfag sees the green grass and violently shitposts saying it isn't better, what they have is all you ever needed and anything better is for retarded consoomers. This is the sort of person who would say 3d acceleration is a scam.
>>12870737>20fpsThat was perfectly acceptable for me back then
>>12870751I remember playing fallout 3 on a shitty Toshiba notebook and it ran like shit... You know what? It actually enhanced the gameplay it really captured the desperation of the post apocalyptic world. Probably one of my fav gaming experiences.
>>12870751If it held that I wouldn't have remembered it so but it would routinely drop to single digits as soon as any effects played or more than 2 cars were on screen.
>>12870730I mean as long as you get a browser that can still talk in modern TLS I can't hate.
You can say "oh my god it's just your sentimental ass keeping this old shit around" but hearing that fan noise? It soothes my soul and helps me sleep.
>>12870785For me it's more like "I like to configure all this shit that I used to have my dad do when I was a kid".It's annoying and sometimes things happen where you're like "WTF, that should be working" but being able to actually USE my computer instead of merely interact with it thanks to the simplicity of modern computing is enjoyable in its own right.
>>12870787I remember my cousin doing some magic tricks in DOS. That's something I will never forget. For many people retro gaming is shoving Zelda cartridge into their N64 for me it was how many floppy disks. Games like Comanche were fucking out this world at the time.
>What does your retro PC gaming solution look like?Different.Right now I have two working desktops. PI 120, 16 Mb, S3Trio+Voodoo2, DOS and PIII 1000, 512, Voodoo3/TnT2Ultra, Win98; also two notebooks, PI and PII (both running Win95), and a large stash of all kinds of hardware from the 90s. Some of it has always been mine, bought the rest when it was still dirt cheap, about ten-fifteen years ago.At the same time, I have no qualms about virtualization. I still feel awe whenever the Windows 95 intro starts, whether on real hardware or in VMware/86Box (I use both).So anything goes as long as you're interested in old games.
This thread reminded me that I can't remember if my 9x PC has the Voodoo 3 or the Quadro in it.
>>12870469the real junkI just like it
>>12870469I had a Dell D505 for w98 compatibility and 15" 4:3, but win98 actually fucking sucked on it, and I didn't have any issues running XP on it. Some of the mod tools I am really engrossed in run like shit, so I bought a Precision M4400, being one of the last that sold with XP, super high core speeds, 16:10, app controllable p state and undervolting, no bga faults, and piss cheap. Believe me I spent a long time looking at the T60, Precision M50, HP ZD7000, M6400, M6300, etc. 15.4" is a good compromise I see working out with minimal risk, anything crt era I can just use the D505 for and not worry about performance, it's just not gathering my interest now. If I really wanted to do win98 in earnest I'd probably get a slightly older desktop with a Northwood P4 or athlon XP, I had so many issues with this being a laptop with changeable resolutions, rmclock didn't work, sleep wouldn't work. I still have my 7720 now with windows 8 on it for phenomenally better 4k scaling. I don't know if I'll keep 8 on it or at this point just change the screen to a 1080p one, it looks grainy and weird set to 1080p unlike a 1080p native display
>>12870552I like those standard Dell cases, its like a sleeper>>12870469Dell Pentium 4Why bother trying to chase a high end P3, a cheap P4 will beat it. Usb ports can be used as the hdd if you want, simple usb keyboard and mouse but for win 98 you have to wait for them to auto detect, might need a ps2 for the first time to click next.AGP port for whatever era you want.Its the most worthless unwanted computer and is perfect for dos and win 98, my favorite era.Mini 386 repro for games before about 1995Book 8086 with a real CGA chip, pc games upto 1987 but some even upto 1991.I like the whole tuning and trying to make a game run on a pc that is not supposed to be capable.>>12870861The p1 era is great.>>12870737Midtown madness on a p1 with a voodoo, felt incredible but right on the edge of playable. I like to feel the opposite now using an overpowered PC to rip through graphics.>>12870616I like branded machines, feels like a retro console.
My first computer was an ex office likely 486 or pentium machine running windows 3.11 that was loaded with shareware (luv me some duke nukem) and using a dot matrix printer to print a page of A4 text was measured in minutes. Defragging the hard drive had to be done overnight as it took so long and I still remember all the beeps, boops and whirrs we all associate with hardware of that period. Fun in so much that it exists as a nice memory but i'd never want to actually go back to that for daily use, even as a dedicated nostalgia machine.It is why you see people making "super" computers for a given time period doing all kinds of shenanigans like SD cards instead of hard drives or RAID setups to overcome the painfully slow parts that are undesirable (that and 30-40 year old electronics aren't exactly reliable).Though it does make me wonder how attitudes will be once we reach the age of /vr/ tier hardware hitting 100 years old. Car culture has already got there.
do you have a 3Dfx card?I have a Voodoo I and an AGP Banshee
